Malala makes it to global list

NASIR JAFFRY

Islamabad, Nov 27: For standing up to the Taliban, and everything they represent, made Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old child rights activist from Swat valley, shine on the number six spot of the top 100 Global Thinkers list.

The list was released by Foreign Policy (FP) magazine on Monday, November 26, 2012, local English-language newspaper The Express Tribune reported on Tuesday.

This year, FP honoured people who spoke for freedom of speech, for making themselves heard. Malala was among four Pakistanis who made it to the list this year.

The 15-year-old stood up against the Taliban to fight for her and many girls’ right to education. "I shall raise my voice," she said last year. "If I didn’t do it, who would?"

An earlier report by Unesco’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFAGMR) revealed that Pakistan is in the bottom 10 countries, with 62 percent girls in Pakistan, aged between seven and 15, who have never been to school.

In October, Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban on her way back home from school. She survived the attack and is currently recuperating at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

Former a mbassador to the United States Husain Haqqani and his wife, Farahnaz Ispahani were placed on number 61 on the list "for pushing tough love for their troubled country."

Haqqani, who once defended Pakistan’s stance and brokered discussions in order to pacify the US, said in August that the two countries "should stop pretending they are allies and amicably ‘divorce’".

According to FP, the couple who shares the same slot on the list "spent their careers fighting the slow-motion radicalisation of Pakistan."

The former ambassador was blamed by a judicial commission to have authored a memo delivered to US officials, seeking assistance to overthrow the military brass of the country.

Branding the controversial memorandum "an authentic document", the commission headed by Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa and comprising chief justices of Sindh and Islamabad High Court as its members pointed out that Haqqani did indeed seek US help possibly to sell himself as an indispensable asset to the Americans.

His wife, Ispahani, had written in her opinion piece for the Wahington Post this year that there was a "ystematic elimination of anyone who stands up to the country’s generals, who have created a militarised Islamist state."

Following the Memogate controversy, Haqqani resigned from his post as Pakistan’s envoy, while Ispahani’s membership of the Parliament was suspended in a dual nationality case against her.

On number 100 spot on the list is Pakistani blogger Sana Saleem, who made it to the list for "insisting that free speech."

Saleem’s campaign against government censorship "Bolo Bhi" landed her a place in the list.

Saleem, in order to push for free speech, fought against a proposal by the government to filter and block URLs by installing a firewall.

She reached out to executives at international companies, asking them not to participate in building firewall and succeeded in making the government shelve the proposal.